The Best & The Worst

Rating the Clip-and-Save Fundraisers

By Richard Bernstein

Published: October 9, 2005

Russ is a good sport. The Chrysler auto mechanic from Aberdeen, S.D. found himself duct taped to the wall for two hours recently after students at Jeffferson Middle School completed their four month long Box Tops for Education fundraising goal at his urging only to realize the prize amounted to a total of a little over twenty dollars.

After months of collecting, the help of dozens of students, parents, several teachers, and five full rolls of duct tape, the box tops program was complete. The glowing newspaper reports of the celebration talked about how Simmons would now be able to “get computer software, playground equipment, and other items from the (program)” for the Jefferson school. Unfortunately the funds generated after months of collecting box tops were barely enough to buy lunch at the local fast-food drive-through.

The little known fact, though, is that for all of Simmons’ work, the group earned enough for about $22 of prize value. And that’s before deducting the cost of shipping labels, labor and, yes, even duct tape. Celebrate team work and have some fun? Yes. Ease your guilt? Absolutely. Celebrate the box tops program? No way. It’s not a productive use of time or effort, by any measure. Most box top coupons are only worth a dime or so, at most. Many are not even worth the paper they were printed on and serve only to bolster product brand sales to unsuspecting consumers.

Tens of thousands of other groups are still running the box tops programs, with all of its requisite effort and cost, and seeing similarly weak returns.

Russ suggests good fund raising can be handled more effectively by simply allowing donors to do whatever they do best, such as spend an extra hour on the job earning a much higher return on their time, then just write a check.

As a 4th year mechanic Russ earns roughly $31.00 per hour plus benefits at the dealership. Ross illustrates his experience by figuring that even at a dime each (many coupons are worth only a few hundredths of one cent) he would have to collect over three hundred dime value box tops just to produce the same results of working just one hour as a mechanic, and that’s without over-time pay. He notes he would also need to purchase, pay for, and handle hundreds of boxes of foodstuffs to equal what he could accomplish himself in less than 60 minutes without all the wasted time, effort, and then the final bittersweet disappointing reality of four months work himself and by many well meaning good Samaritans.

So fundraisers, keep up the good work, only stick to what you do best. Washing cars, collecting box tops and the like is a wasteful and misguided use of time and your goodwill. It may make you feel good, but you are not helping those most in need by playing into these shrewd marketing ploys which in the end benefit most the huge corporations laughing all the way to the bank.